It was the first sign of trouble Monday morning as the Kiowa attack helicopter banked over palm groves, fields and canals on a reconnaissance mission to help flush out Sunni insurgents entrenched in rural areas south of Baghdad.

It was also the opening episode of a dramatic 90-minute ordeal of combat and survival that saw the two Army pilots crash-land their aircraft and take cover in neck-high water and reeds in a canal.

After escaping fire from more than a dozen insurgents just yards away on either side, the two dashed to a rescue helicopter that lifted them to safety.

Hearing Cianfrini’s warning, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Mark Burrows, 35, banked right to evade bullets from a heavy machine gun that had opened up across a field. Then a second machine gun began firing at them. Burrows turned again, only to face a heavier barrage.

“The whole world just opened up on us, it seemed like,” Cianfrini said in a telephone interview from Iraq Tuesday. “We zigzagged, we did whatever we could do to get out of the guns’ target line. Then we started taking fire from behind. That is what took the aircraft down.”

The Kiowa started to shake violently, its main rotor damaged. Burrows said he decided to head into the field, but the aircraft began to spin uncontrollably and at about 20 feet above the ground, he had to shut down its power. The helicopter hit the ground tail first, bounced over a canal, crashed nose down and slid into a ditch beside an adjacent dirt road.

Cianfrini climbed out one door, and Burrows got out the other. They met at the nose and discovered that they had suffered only scratches, they said. The Kiowa was by then on fire, its engine blowing up inside. Insurgents were shooting at them from across the field, and the pilots could hear the rounds hitting the burning helicopter.

“Where’s your weapon?” Burrows yelled to Cianfrini.

“I have no idea,” came the reply.

Cianfrini’s M-4 rifle had apparently been thrown from the aircraft, but he still had his M-9 pistol. Burrows had both his weapons.

“We determined our only option was to go into the canal,” said Burrows of Waverly, N.Y.

Cianfrini, of Oakfield, N.Y., initially stayed behind with the radio at the aircraft, while Burrows rushed about 30 feet across the road and into the canal. Cianfrini followed.

Burrows waded into the knee-deep water, then stepped off an underwater embankment and started sinking into three feet of mud. Weighed down by his body armor, he said he thought he would drown. But he hit firm ground just as the water rose to his neck. Cianfrini waded in and crouched down.

The pilots planned to cross the canal to reach a field on the other side. But the mud made it impossible for them to move. Moments later, they realized that had they not been stuck in the canal they probably would have died: Insurgents were waiting on the opposite side.

About 15 or 20 insurgents with AK-47 semiautomatic rifles and other weapons then converged on either side of the canal and started firing.

“We couldn’t move,” Cianfrini said. “I was thinking, ‘This is it.'”

Bullets were hitting the water, chopping off the reeds, and zinging over the pilots’ heads. The canal was only about 20 yards wide. The insurgents were so close that Burrows could see one quite clearly. He wore a brown T-shirt and shouldered an AK-47.

“He just didn’t see us. I don’t know how,” said Burrows, who was back-to-back with Cianfrini. “I was just praying that they didn’t see us.”

Suddenly, he saw the fighter use hand signals. A truck rolled over, and another fighter started firing into the canal with a heavy machine gun, at first directly at the pilots’ position.

“The fire coming into the reeds was so intense, I was expecting to take a bullet in the head at any minute,” Cianfrini said.

After about five or 10 minutes that seemed an eternity, the machine gun fire gradually moved away up the canal.

The firing grew more distant, and about the same time, Burrows heard the distinctive drone of a U.S. Army unmanned vehicle circling above. He heard distant machine-gun fire aimed at the pilots’ wingmen in another Kiowa that had stayed in the area. Then a pair of Apache attack helicopters from the 1st Cavalry Division swooped in, engaging the enemy fighters with a 30 mm cannon and pushing them back.

Burrows knew it would be hard for the Apache pilots to spot them, and loaded a pen flare. But Cianfrini vehemently advised against setting it off until they were sure the insurgents had left.

“He stated clearly that I should wait,” Burrows recalled.

One Apache was over the nearby field, and Burrows managed to crawl out of the mud and scramble up the vertical embankment, grasping at reeds. He waved the Apache down to the road, and used his M-4 to help pull Cianfrini out of the mud.

The Apache had only two seats. Cianfrini took one, while one of the Apache pilots, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Micah Johnson, strapped himself onto the exterior of the helicopter. Burrows used his survival vest to strap in on the other side.

Soaking and covered with mud, Burrows held onto the hand-grip on the outside of the Apache as it lifted off and headed back to base at 120 miles an hour, buffeting him hard with the wind. But Burrows didn’t mind at all.

“I was in pretty high spirits knowing I was going home,” he said.

The two pilots will have a minimum of four days before they have to fly another mission. They will spend at least another year in Iraq.

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